NEOMENTALISM

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NEOMENTALISM

• David Pearson
• Room T10, William Guild Building
• d.g.pearson_at_abdn.ac.uk

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• I would have you imagine, then, that there
  exists in the mind of man a block of
  wax.......When we wish to remember anything which
  we have seen, or heard, or thought in our own
  minds, we hold the wax to the perceptions and
  thoughts, and in that material receive the
  impression of them as from the seal of a ring
  and...... we remember and know what is imprinted
  as long as the image lasts but when the image is
  effaced or cannot be taken, then we forget and do
  not know. Plato, Theatetus.

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• Plato uses the metaphor of a wax tablet to try
  and explain how the mind stores sensory
  information.
• He suggests there is a relationship between the
  structure of the copies and the structure of the
  stimuli which give rise to them.
• Similar to the modern theory that there is a
  relationship between the organisation of images
  and the organisation of percepts.

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WHAT EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE IS THERE THAT IMAGES
ARE ORGANISED IN A SIMILAR FASHION TO PERCEPTS ?

• During the 1970s a research movement developed
  called neomentalism (Paivio, 1975)
• Prior to this imagery had mainly been studied
  using introspection i.e., Galtons imagery
  questionnaire (1883).

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Galtons breakfast-table Questionnaire (1883)

• Think of some definite object suppose it is
  your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this
  morning and consider carefully the picture that
  rises before your minds eye.
• Illumination. Is the image dim or fairly clear?
• Distance of images. Where do mental images appear
  to be situated?
• Command over images. Can you retain a mental
  picture steadily before the eyes?
• Full questionnaire consists of 14 items in total.

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• Main problem with introspection is that it
  produces subjective rather than objective data.
• Neomentalism attempted to rectify this by using
  experimental techniques first developed in the
  field of psychophysics.
• Psychophysics collected behavioural data (i.e.,
  response times, accuracy scores) for decisions
  based on sensory stimuli
• Neomentalism collected behavioural data for
  decisions based on images rather than percepts.

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• Neomentalism used three main experimental
  methodologies
• Mental rotation
• Mental scanning
• Mental comparisons

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Mental Rotation

• First demonstrated by Shepard and Metzler in
  1971.
• Presented participants with pairs of identical or
  enantiomorphic (mirror-reversed) objects in
  different orientations. Had to decide whether
  pairs were identical or different.

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Mental Rotation Results (Shepard Metzler, 1971)
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• Mental rotation appeared to display the same
  attributes as physical rotation of objects in the
  real world.
• Images are like some quasi-perceptual simulacrum
  of the 3-D object (Boden, 1988).
• However, some studies show that mental rotation
  does not exactly duplicate the physical rotation
  of objects in the real world
• - effects of visual complexity on accuracy of
  rotation (Rock, 1973)

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Effects of complexity on mental rotation (Rock,
1973)
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• Mental rotation appeared to display the same
  attributes as physical rotation of objects in the
  real world.
• Images are like some quasi-perceptual simulacrum
  of the 3-D object (Boden, 1988).
• However, some studies show that mental rotation
  does not exactly duplicate the physical rotation
  of objects in the real world
• - effects of visual complexity on accuracy of
  rotation (Rock, 1973)
• - even a simple cube can be very difficult to
• mentally rotate correctly (Hinton, 1979)

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Mental Scanning

• Kosslyn, Ball Reiser (1978) asked participants
  to imagine a small black dot travelling between
  landmarks on a mental image of a fictitious
  island.

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• The mental image of map appeared to preserve the
  spatial characteristics of the original picture.
• However.
• I have a nagging concern that implicitly, much
  of the experimental work in this field consists
  of instructing the subject to behave as if he
  were seeing something in the outside
  world.......Whether such results tell us how the
  system works, or indeed tell us much about the
  phenomenology, I am as yet uncertain. Baddeley
  (1986)

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• Critics have argued that the results are entirely
  due to participants tacit knowledge (Pylyshyn,
  1973 1984)

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• Critics have argued that the results are entirely
  due to participants tacit knowledge (Pylyshyn,
  1973 1984)
• Some support for this comes from the work of
  Mitchell Richman (1980).
• Other mental scanning experiments are less
  vulnerable to this criticism because they do not
  explicitly instruct participants to use imagery
  e.g., Finke Pinker (1982).

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Mental Comparisons

• This type of task requires comparative judgements
  about objects or concepts, without any form of
  external perceptual referent being available.
• First carried out by Moyer (1973), who asked
  people to decide which of two animals would
  usually be the larger.
• Found that people took systematically longer to
  decide for animals of similar size (i.e., Hamster
  - Mouse) compared to animals where differences in
  size were larger (i.e., Dog - Elephant).

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• This was termed symbolic distance effect (Moyer
  Bayer, 1976).
• Results of mental comparisons mimicked results
  for perceptual comparisons of real objects
  (Woodworth Sclosberg, 1954 Curtis, Paulos
  Rule, 1973).

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Perceptual comparisons of size
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• This was termed symbolic distance effect (Moyer
  Bayer, 1976).
• Results of mental comparisons mimicked results
  for perceptual comparisons of real objects
  (Woodworth Sclosberg, 1954 Curtis, Paulos
  Rule, 1973).
• Suggested that people made mental comparisons
  using image-based psychophysical judgements.
• Results replicated by Paivio (1975). Also
  reported picture superiority and picture
  incongruency effects.

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Picture Superiority Effect
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Picture Incongruency Effect
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Picture Incongruency Effect
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• Critics argue that mental comparisons are based
  on semantic memory, not imagery (Banks Flora,
  1977)
• Presence of a semantic congruity effect supports
  the involvement of abstract language-like
  representations, not imagery (Banks, 1977).
• Participants faster to decide which of two items
  would be smaller if both could be considered
  small in an absolute sense. Similar effect found
  for comparisons of larger objects.
• - Mouse - Ant
• - Elephant - Whale

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• Symbolic distance effects can be produced for
  comparisons of almost any attribute, regardless
  of whether it is concrete or abstract. This
  includes
• monetary value of cars, ferocity of animals,
  military power of countries (Kerst Howard,
  1977)
• units of time temperature, and measures of
  quality (Holyoak Walker, 1976)
• friendliness (Potts, 1974)
• alphabetic ordering of letters (Lovelace
  Snodgrass, 1971)
• intelligence of animals (Banks Flora, 1977)
• pleasantness (Paivio, 1978)
• emotional reactions to abstract word-pairs
  (Friedman, 1978)

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• Kerst Howard (1977) argue that SDEs result from
  any mental comparison made on an ordered
  dimension, and are neither indicative of analogue
  processing, or the adoption of a specific imagery
  strategy.
• But.
• The neomentalists struck back. Argued that
  imagery is used in conjunction with searches in
  semantic memory, and performs a functional role
  in situations in which it can explicitly
  represent information which is only implicitly
  encoded within semantic memory.

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Explicit and Implicit Mental Comparisons

• Questions about a fox
• Does a fox have four legs?
• Does a fox have reddish fur?
• What shape are a foxs ears?
• What length is a foxs tail in proportion to the
  rest of its body?